TeleSUR TV/Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA)

President Bashar al-Assad gave an interview to Latin America TeleSUR TV channel. Following is the full text of the interview:

TeleSUR: Welcome TeleSUR viewers to this special program covering the events in Syria. Our distinguished guest has managed to capture the attention of the whole world – President Bashar al-Assad. Mr. President, thank you for giving this interview to TeleSUR, which we hope will provide an opportunity for our viewers in Latin America to understand your perspective and your views. Welcome to the program.

President Assad: I would like to welcome you and TeleSUR in Syria and to extend my good wishes to you on your recovery from your leg injury. I believe that my interview with a journalist who has witnessed terrorism first hand will be pragmatic and rich. Once again, I welcome you as a journalist whose blood has been mixed with the blood of soldiers from the Syrian Arab Army.

TeleSUR: Thank you. Indeed, there are many common factors between us, including this blood. You mentioned terrorism - a car bomb exploded in Damascus yesterday, killing and injuring many civilians. What is the terrorist’s message particularly in these circumstances facing Syria and the world? And how do you see the current efforts to confront terrorism in Syria?

President Assad: These terrorists have only one message, which is the dark ideology they carry in their minds; for them, all those who do not think like them do not deserve to live. Every so often, they carry out these acts of terror to either attract people to their cause or to frustrate them. In other words, they want people to lose hope - and when you lose hope, life has no meaning. So in one way or another you become closer to them. From another perspective, these terrorist operations are financed, planned and instigated by people outside Syria with the aim of pushing Syrians towards complete despair, making them believe that there is no hope in their homeland and that the Syria which has existed for centuries no longer exists. Loss of hope pushes people towards defeat, which in turn makes them stop defending their country. What you saw yesterday was only one of hundreds of attempts in that direction; in fact they have all had the opposite effect - Syrians today are more committed than ever before to defending their country.

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Pepe Escobar

He came. He listened. And he surfed.

"I listened carefully to the statement made by President Obama today at the General Assembly... [I'm] hoping that they will refrain from following the short-sighted interests of warmongering pressure groups and we can arrive at a framework to managing our differences."

Then he outlined what has always been the official Iranian position: "Talks can happen; equal footing and mutual respect should govern the talks." Then he addressed the expectation (actually, the world's):

"Of course, we expect to hear a consistent voice from Washington. The dominant voice in recent years has been for a military option."

But now he had another idea. So he sets the stage for the punch line: It's WAVE time. WAVE as in World Against Violence and Extremism. Not in Farsi, lost in translation; in English.

"I propose as a starting step... I invite all states... to undertake a new effort to guide the world in this direction ... we should start thinking about a coalition for peace all across the globe instead of the ineffective coalitions for war."

So the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, has just invited the whole planet to join the WAVE. How come no "coalition of the willing" leader ever thought about that?

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